Flee

Date: 19/04/2022 Times: 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm

We are showing this film as a Benefit for refugees and all proceeds from ticket sales will go to Refugee Action-Colchester, to aid refugees of all nationalities.  So please come and support this cause. It is an unusual film, an adult political animation, in the style of Waltz with Bashir and Persepolis. Like those films it is a documentary about a real person, whose voice you hear on the soundtrack. It is directed by the Danish French film-maker Jonas Poher Rasmussen, who interviews a middle-aged academic living in Denmark reliving his flight from Afghanistan as a boy. It is shaping up as a major awards contender, being nominated for best animated feature and best documentary at both the BAFTAs and Oscars, with an additional Academy Award nod for best international feature.

Drawing on his background in radio documentaries, Rasmussen conducted a lengthy series of intimate interviews with the pseudonymously renamed ‘Amin Nawabi’ whom he had known since middle school, but who had kept his past to himself. There is a palpable air of discovery as Rasmussen’s subject gradually reveals himself, finally giving voice to traumas that had long been hidden. Key to Amin’s openness is the animated format that allows him to speak about his life without sacrificing his anonymity. His memories are vivid, packed with the kind of details that transfer beautifully to the screen: flying kites and listening to music on headphones on the streets of Kabul; gazing with dawning longing at posters of Jean-Claude Van Damme; witnessing his father’s stoical courage when the mujahideen come calling. These scenes are rendered in sharp, unfussy 2D animation that are reminiscent  of the boldly accessible images of the Belgian cartoonist Hergé or the rapturous melancholia of the UK-based Dutch animator Michaël Dudok de Wit, of The Red Turtle, which we showed at Moving Image. 

What emerges from this remarkable story is not a tale of victimhood but, rather, a coming-of-age narrative that covers a lifetime. Amin is physically displaced by the events of his early life, and his sense of identity has been similarly fractured.

 

(115 seats remaining)

Venue: William Loveless Hall